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HUGUES HERVÉ and JOHN C. YUILLE The Psychopath: Theory, Research and Practice New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007, 592 Pages (ISBN: 0-8058-5053-8, C$135.00, Cloth)
Reviewed by MARC NESCA
The Psychopath: Theory, Research, ana Practice is an edited text that grew out of a 2000 Festschrift celebrating Dr. Hare's retirement from academia. The identified audience for this book includes both lay (e.g., judges) and professional (e.g., forensic practitioners) consumers, as well as students and researchers. The book begins with an historical overview of the construct of psychopathy and then works its way through a variety of important issues, including measurement, etiology, behavioural manifestations of the disorder, typologies, and practice considerations.
The first section opens with a balanced and informative overview of the psychopathy literature written by Dr. Hare. This overview highlights progress made since the emergence of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) as the gold standard diagnostic instrument for psychopathy, with links drawn to the diverse areas of inquiry that have been impacted by Dr. Hare's work. The main theme of this chapter is that our understanding of psychopathy has increased significantly as a result of the development of a valid and reliable diagnostic instrument. Indeed, Dr. Hare explicitly warns that loosening of the operational definition of psychopathy may "... result in a partial return to the conceptual and measurement confusion JA that held sway some 20 years ago" (p. 7).
Among the high points of this book are chapters examining the affective-interpersonal features of psychopathy, the link between psychopathy and crime scene analysis, psychopathy in women, psychopathy in youth, and the role of psychopathy in domestic violence. The latter includes a very interesting, albeit quite brief, discussion of treatment issues for psychopathic batterers. The chapter on psychopathy in women is also...